TO ALL OWNERS IN THE ANCHOR POINT TOWERS:
At the recent Anchor Point BBQ presentation, we were asked to speak as an “owners panel” as we cover a cross section of owner interests as our panel of 3 owners include residents, investors and commercial business owners across all three towers. At the presentation, we explained to the other owners at the meeting why we had decided to sign Listing Agreements with Klein Group.
The feedback at and after the BBQ event was that our owners panel was helpful in explaining our decision to other owners, clarifying questions and encouraging dialogue. We were asked by several owners to continue to provide help and leadership going forward with the assembly process.
Therefore, we have organized ourselves into the official Anchor Point Assembly Committee (APAC).
We are dedicated to moving the assembly transaction forward in a positive way without aggression.
We invite all owners who have signed Listing Agreements with Klein Group to participate in our Facebook group, to join with us in acting on behalf of all owners – residential, investor and commercial whether they have signed listing agreements with Klein Group or not. We want to be able to reach out to owners that are not yet part of the assembly process - to help them clarify their questions and get real answers.
Our goal is to do all of this in a genuinely respectful manner. All owners will be able to access the Facebook Group, but it is available by invitation only. Please request access by emailing OfficialAPAC@gmail.com. We will try to screen all posts before allowing them to be available to others so that we can ensure a polite and appropriate tone in the group. All posts are subject to being removed if we determine that the tone is not appropriate.
We know that not every owner is in agreement with the assembly approach, although in all our recent AGMs and SGMs, approximately 80% of owners in each of the towers voted to proceed with bringing Anchor Point to market as a development site. While we doubt that everyone will ever be in complete agreement, we are willing to make ourselves available to discuss whatever issues people may have on their mind about the assembly process and how it might personally impact them.
It has been our experience since January that the most effective communication has been individual and small group meetings (of less than 10 people at a time so that a genuine dialogue can take place). We hope to be able to provide opportunities for this on an ongoing basis. We believe this will be the best way forward.
We have asked Klein Group to send out this original message to all owners. From now on, if you have questions that we can be helpful in answering, if you wish to participate, or if you wish to organize/host a small group meeting in any of the towers with your owner friends and neighbors, we can be reached at OfficialAPAC@gmail.com.
As questions come up, we will post answers on our Official blog: http://officialapac.blogspot.com/ and on our official Facebook Group (please email us if you'd like to join the private Group): https://www.facebook.com/groups/OfficialAPAC/
Respectfully,
Teresa Triggiano (resident owner tower 1, Counselor, Writer, Global News Segment Producer and Realtor)
Samuel Fay (former resident tower 3, now investor tower 2 and 3, President Tower 3 Strata Council)
Lyle Weinstein (commercial unit owner tower 3, US attorney, Author: The Alzheimers Family Manual)
Hi
ReplyDeleteI wish your efforts great success. I have just a couple of questions.
What are your feelings if someone was to sign the Klein contract and also accept the Sotheby's offer? (both) Do you see any issues with doing that?
As of today how many have signed the Klein contract? Do you have any idea how many have accepted the Sotheby's offer? Even an educated guess please.
I wish you good luck with bringing us all together ....A HUGE TASK !! (I support you)
Thank you
Hi Terry,
DeleteThank you for your good wishes.
I think that signing the Klein agreement while also accepting the Sotheby's offer puts you in an interesting position. A post will go up tomorrow analyzing the two different types of agreement. For the moment though, in the interest of responding quickly, I think that signing with Klein puts them in a fiduciary position to negotiate on your behalf, if you wish, with Sotheby's. This will only matter when you are asked to extend the Sotheby's agreement. This will very likely happen as Sotheby's is not accumulating many contracts, at least so far as I know. So, they will not get to the point where they will want to close and they have the right to decide to close or not under their contract. I don't believe you do. My guess is that Klein will tell you the Sotheby's agreement is likely not enforceable. However, signing with Klein will add momentum to the assembly process which will likely go on past the extension date of the Sotheby's agreement. More tomorrow on the two contracts.
As to the numbers, I believe about 40% of Tower 3 owners have signed with Klein, 21% of Tower 1 and about 6% of Tower 2. I expect those to change when we get near the 15th of June as some people will want to take advantage of the discounted commission that ends June 15.
Hi again...
ReplyDeleteI forgot one other question.
Are you recommending that we should pay the 250.00 $ for Ed Wilson (lawyer)
Thanks again
sorry, just saw that you had another question...
DeleteIf you hadn't heard me speak to owners before, let me, once again, state that I am not an attorney in Canada and do not give legal advice here. I am an attorney in the US only, so my wife and I consulted with our real estate attorney here in BC about the AP development issues and had him review the Klein listing agreement before we signed.
That being said, I have no interest in disparaging Ed Wilson or those owners who have joined the group retaining him. Personally, I always think it is best to hire one's own lawyer because they have a fiduciary duty to you alone without conflicts.
Are the really any potential conflicts? Well, for example, at the AP2 Klein Q&A, an owner criticized the method Klein suggested for allocating the development purchase price across all the units. This owner said if another method was used, he would get more. On what basis could an attorney representing multiple owners recommend one method that will benefit one set of owners within the group over another method that will benefit a different set of owners? This is just one of what appears to me to be several inherent conflict of interest in representing an unincorporated loose association of owners without clear guidelines. But again, that depends on what Ed Wilson was actually retained to do.
Please take everything I say about Ed Wilson's words in this situation with a grain of salt. Why? It is because virtually all of the communications have been through the APOG steering committee, not from Ed Wilson directly. I don't have confidence that the message from APOG is necessarily the exact message, in context, from Ed Wilson.
What I do know is that he did not contact Klein until around the time of the BBQ event, 2+ months after he had the agreement.
I don't know whether or not he gave advice one way or the other to the owners in that group about the risk of not taking up Klein on the discounted commission offer or the likelihood that he (Ed) would be able negotiate a different commission structure. According to at least on such owner, they received no guidance prior to the decision date.
Without getting that advice in a timely fashion, people in AP3 that were following the APOG lead, walked away from 1% of the potential sale price of their unit - far more than $250. Those following that lead also walked away from the $650 closing cost reimbursement that expired already.
The problem is that I don't know what instructions Ed Wilson received from the APOG steering committee. I know that at least one of the individuals on that committee does not want to sell for another 3-5 years based on that individual's own retirement plans and goals. Based on an earlier conversation with me, I can confidently say that the individual in question wishes to delay the potential transaction. If that is the goal, then sowing dissension among the owners is the most effective path.
We need to avoid needless dissension. Dialogue, questions, debate are all fine so long as they are polite and in keeping with neighborly camaraderie. With the proper intention, we get clarity rather than dissension and confusion.
If the instruction to Ed Wilson is to get the deal put together and done, as 80% of the owners in each tower voted, that is one thing. however, I don't know if that was the instruction he was given.
Without knowing or controlling the instructions to Ed Wilson that others have given to him, I would spend the $250 on my own lawyer advising me about the agreement. 30 some odd owners did that (including my wife and I) and none of the lawyers had serious concerns that Klein couldn't address.
Best wishes.